Hannah Waddingham Admits She Has a "Little List of People" Who Tried to Stifle Her Acting Career
"I’m just like: ‘No, you’re alright. Just look somewhere else.'"
Actress Hannah Waddingham is not going to forget the people who didn't believe in her or who tried to block her acting career any time soon.
During a recent interview with MSNBC's Willie Geist for the latest episode of the Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist podcast, the Ted Lasso star admitted that she keeps "a little list of people" who, as US Weekly reports, "wouldn't give me the time of day but now want to work together."
“I’m not going to lie, there are a few producers that are now suddenly like: ‘Is there a book you want to develop or…’ and I’m just like: ‘No, you’re alright. Just look somewhere else,'" she said at the time. "Because, you know, we’re human and we remember, so no. Bug off!
She went on to call people who have now realized how talented and capable she is as both an actress and a singer as "back-catalogers."
"Yeah, you're looking at my clips now," she added. "In your face!"
Hannah Waddingham at the Emmys.
According to Waddingham, she likes the fact that she has been "knocking around for a while," especially because it teaches her 9-year-old daughter a very valuable lesson.
"I say to my daughter, do no be fooled," she explained. "Even in the car yesterday, we were driving down Broadway and she was like: 'Mommy, this is the part of your career I want to do, not the telly thing. I want to be on Broadway!' And I said: 'But remember...' and she goes: 'I know, it didn't start in a black Mercedes.' Because it's important for her to see that I had no life, you have to become so disciplined with your voice and your body, and it's grafting, grafting, grafting for no other reason than loving the craft.
"It's like being an intern," she added. "I feel like all of that was being an intern for what I can put on screen now."
Before securing breakout roles in Ted Lasso and Game of Thrones, Waddingham said she felt "very much indoctrinated to stay in my lane" as a theater actor, instead of trying to cross over into television and movies.
Brett Goldstein and Hannah Waddingham at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards on September 19, 2021.
"I’d had 10 years of being a leading lady in the West End and it really got the bit between my teeth, that there was…TV and film people could come into theater…but going back that way didn’t happen," she explained.
In a recent interview for Michelle Visage's Rule Breakers podcast in January, Waddingham recalled a former drama teacher who she says told "the whole class" that Waddingham would "never work on screen because she looks like one side of her face has had a stroke."
"I thought: 'I will do. Come hell or high water, I will work on-screen,'" she said at the time, though she did admit that her teacher's comments "gave me a complex for years."
"In my Emmys speech, I made a point," she continued, referring to her 2021 acceptance speech. "The one thing I said to myself was if this weird moment comes and I get this award, and I get my foot in this door, I'm going to rip it off its hinges for musical theater people, or theater people, to follow."
